Overwatch May Be Coming To Mac Based On Installer

Have you been interested in Overwatch, but were left out so far because you’re a Mac user?

Chances are you’ll soon be able to jump into Blizzard’s sci-fi multiplayer shooter based on an installer file discovered by fans recently. As opposed to all of the other announcements this week, this news doesn’t come from Blizzcon, nor any official source for that matter, and at this point still constitutes a rumor.

Some industrious fans managed to download what appears to be the game’s installer for Mac platforms from the official Battle.Net website by altering the URL of the PC download link. Though the installer itself is a dummy and whatever it extracts isn’t a playable program, it could be quite telling of what Blizzard is planning.

The installer allows for a full installation, however you cannot launch the game via any executable nor will the Mac version of the Blizzard Game Launcher/Battle.Net desktop app detect the game.

Looking through the files of what this installs, almost everything is identical to the Windows install of the game, however this isn’t an indication that this is just an erroneous installer, since World of Warcraft’s Windows version can be copied over 1:1 to a Mac system, and replacing only the .exe with a .app will allow the game to run just fine.

However, there are .icns files in the install as well, which are Apple-only formats, suggesting this is a legit test installation. Blizzard likely assumed that simply unlisting the download URL would prevent it from getting out into the public. World of Warcraft, Starcraft 2 and Diablo 3 are all available to play on Mac platforms, so seeing a port of Overwatch isn’t beyond the realm of possibility.

Some time ago in a video posted by Blizzard, game director Jeff Kaplan touched upon the topic of a Mac release, saying that the team is absolutely open to the idea, however they need to square away other, more important things in the pipeline first. It’s entirely possible that work on the port has since begun. Blizzcon 2017 is currently underway, and while many of the high-calibre announcements already happened, there is a chance that we’ll still get some news on this.

That said, when journalists reached out to Blizz for comment on the rumor, they got a generic non-answer saying that the developers have nothing new to announce. Of course, this could simply be them not trying to blow one of Blizzcon’s remaining announcements, but there is also a chance that either this isn’t legit or that a Mac version is still a long way out.

The event isn’t over however, so keep an eye on our feed for any updates.

Overwatch May Be Coming To Mac Based On Installer was last modified: November 5th, 2017 by Duncan Maxwell